What did happen when the Iraqis gassed the Kurds?

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Let me state this.. I am posting this to add some evidence to refute the idea that the US supported gassing the Kurds. I feel that claim is just bull that is believed by many without question. (Unless you're one of the people who claims that it never happened at all, then I don't know how you explain those dead Kurds). While I am against Bush domestically, when it comes to this war, I know there is no reasonable way to go against the US policy without continuing the dictatorship in Iraq or helping things remain screwed up later. Also, I dislike Saddam Hussein anyways and I wouldn't mind getting him out of power.

 

So, let the copying and pasting begin. Some of this is new, some of this was featured back on the Knowledge is Power blog of mine. (cheap plug )

 

via 2facts.com

 

"Iraq Said to Use Poison Gas in Major Drive on Kurds

 

The Iraqi army had mounted a major drive, including the widespread use of poison gas, against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, according to reports Aug. 24-Sept. 8. More than 100,000 refugees fled across the border into Turkey as Iraq took advantage of the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf war to try to crush the Kurdish guerrilla movement once and for all.

 

The Kurds were a non-Arab people whose unrecognized ethnic homeland of Kurdistan was located in rugged, mountainous terrain that spread across the borders of five nations. The majority of the Kurdish population lived in Iraq, Turkey and Iran, and autonomy- or independence-seeking Kurds in all three countries had risen periodically in rebellion over the years. Smaller Kurdish minorities lived in Syria and the Soviet Union.

 

During the gulf war, both Iran and Iraq had aided Kurdish rebels fighting each other's governments. Iran had been more successful in this, and in the final stages of the war Kurds fighting alongside Iranian troops had posed a serious threat to Iraqi control and forced Baghdad to divert forces from the vital southern front.

 

Iraq had responded with a scorched-earth campaign, launching chemical attacks on civilians (documented by the United Nations and the human rights organization Amnesty International), razing Kurdish villages and resettling their populations in other parts of the country.

 

Iraq's Kurds had formed a coalition of six dissident groups. The main fighting components were the pesh merga ("those who face death") of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), led by Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani.

 

Iraq reportedly began offensive operations in Kurdistan around July 30, when a de facto truce in the gulf war--with the exception of minor border skirmishes--was already in place. Iran reportedly told its former Kurdish allies that it would no longer support them but would offer Kurdish dissidents asylum if they entered Iran unarmed.

 

(A similar abandonment had occurred in 1975, when Iran ended an earlier dispute with Iraq and ceased its aid to Kurdish rebels, who had also received covert support from Israel and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Iraq then crushed the rebellion, which had been led by Mustafa al-Barzani, the father of Massoud.)

 

Kurds Warn, Plead With U.N.

The Times of London Aug. 16 reported that Iraq, under pressure from its primary arms supplier, the Soviet Union, had offered to hold peace talks with the Kurdish rebels. The diplomatic option apparently never got off the ground, however, and Iraq stepped up its attacks after the formal cease-fire with Iran went into effect Aug. 20.

 

Barzani and Talabani Aug. 25-26 appealed to the U.N. to press Iraq not to use chemical weapons and warned that there could be no comprehensive peace in the region without a just settlement of the Kurdish problem. A rebel spokesman, noting that half the frontier lay in Kurdistan, said that U.N. observers would face "arrest" if they entered the area without rebel permission.

 

The story began receiving major press coverage Aug. 31, the day after Turkey officially opened its borders to accept Kurdish civilians fleeing the Iraqi offensive. Diplomats said Iraq had deployed 60,000 of its most elite troops and backed them up with tanks, artillery, fighter-bombers, helicopter gunships and chemical weapons.

 

Estimates of the number of Kurds crossing into Turkey varied, but most put the number at well over 100,000. Many refugees said they had been witness to or had heard of massive poison gas attacks on villages and camps in the mountains near the border.

 

Rebels charged that Iraqi troops had massacred about 1,300 civilians, mostly women and children, in the Dahuk area Aug. 28. Many of the victims allegedly were already suffering from chemical weapons injuries, and rebels said they had been killed to prevent news and evidence of the gas attacks from spreading.

 

A KDP official said overall casualty reports were sketchy because contact with rebel units inside Iraq was difficult. He claimed that guerrillas had destroyed Iraq's 66th special forces brigade in the Sidikan region, killing at least 400 men. But by Sept. 6, refugees in Turkey were acknowledging that the Iraqi drive--which many called a "war of extermination"--had perhaps dealt a fatal blow to the Kurdish resistance, particularly to the KDP, many of whose members were still trapped inside Iraq.

 

Baghdad Denies Charges

Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz Sept. 3 in Geneva admitted that "large numbers" of Kurdish civilians had fled Iraq. But he claimed that the Kurdish rebellion had collapsed and denied that chemical weapons had been used.

 

Iraqi troops were seen Sept. 5 raising flags along the Turkish border, a strip of territory long claimed by the rebels as a "liberated zone." Baghdad Sept. 6 announced an amnesty for the guerrillas, including those who had fled into Turkey, but a Kurdish spokesman dismissed the offer as propaganda. The Iraqi decree specifically excluded PUK leader Talabani (currently said to be in Damascus, Syria), accusing him of breaking previous agreements.

 

Turkish Premier Turgut Ozal Sept. 1 offered the Kurdish refugees temporary asylum, and possibly a new home. On Sept. 5 he accused Iraq of "a massacre of innocent people using every possible weapon." Meanwhile, it was reported Sept. 3 that Turkey had made a conditional offer of sanctuary to Barzani, who then denied that he intended to give up the fight.

 

Ozal's sympathetic treatment of the refugees was reported to have strongly boosted his ruling party's popularity among Turkey's own Kurdish citizens, whose ethnic identity was officially suppressed by the Turkish government.

 

Turkey, nonetheless, was leery of the influx from Iraq, and Turkish security forces reportedly scrutinized refugees to screen out returning members of the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party), which was waging an armed campaign for a separate Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey.

 

Many of the refugees were moved away from the border, and the New York Times Sept. 7 reported that Turkish authorities had already transferred at least 2,000 Iraqi Kurds to Iran against their will.

 

U.S. Accuses Iraq

 

The Reagan administration Sept. 1 and 6 expressed deep concern over the reports of Iraq's use of outlawed chemical weapons but said it was awaiting proof of the charges. The State Department Sept. 8 said it had obtained proof and blasted Iraq's actions as "abhorrent and unjustifiable."

 

The condemnation came as Secretary of State George Shultz met in Washington with Iraqi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Saddoun Hammadi. Shultz told him that the continued use of poison gas would affect overall U.S.-Iraqi relations. Leaving the meeting, Hammadi called the charges "absolutely baseless."

 

U.S. officials said the "supporting evidence" that convinced them of Iraq's guilt included the reports from American sources in Turkey, as well as eyewitness accounts and "other technical means involving intelligence."

 

The Iraqi arsenal reportedly included mustard gas, which burned the skin and was often fatal if inhaled, as well as more lethal Tabun nerve gas and cyanide gas. U.S. officials said they were particularly angry because Baghdad's previously stated rationale for using chemical weapons--that they were a last-ditch defense against a more numerous Iranian foe--did not apply in the repression of the Kurds.

 

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D, R.I.) Sept. 8 introduced a bill calling for sanctions to punish Iraq for what he characterized as its anti-Kurdish "genocide.""

 

"U.S. Senate Passes Sanctions

The international furor over charges that Iraq had used chemical weapons in its battle against Kurdish insurgents continued to mount Sept. 9-15. The U.S. Senate voted to impose punitive sanctions on Iraq, while Iraq and Turkey said they would not cooperate with a proposed investigation by United Nations experts.

 

(...)

 

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Claiborne Pell (D, R.I.) and passed unanimously Sept. 9, would suspend U.S. credit and most sales to Iraq and would require American representatives to international financial institutions to vote against all loans to Iraq. It was considered one of the fastest and strongest congressional responses to an international human rights violation.

 

The bill then went to the House, where approval in some form was considered likely. The State Department, however, apparently leery of further damaging relations with Baghdad, said the sanctions drive was "premature."

 

(The European Parliament Sept. 15 called for European governments to ban shipments to Iraq of arms and any equipment that could be used to make chemical weapons.)

 

Meanwhile, the U.S. defended its claim to have obtained proof of Iraq's guilt. U.S. diplomats Sept. 9 cited interviews with Kurdish refugees in Turkey who showed injuries typical of gas attacks. Reagan administration officials Sept. 15 said U.S. intelligence had intercepted Iraqi military communications indicating the use of chemical weapons.

 

Turkey, backing away from its initial criticism of Iraq, Sept. 9 and 13 claimed that its officials and doctors had not been able to confirm that the various ailments that many of the Kurdish refugees were suffering from could be blamed on poison gas.

 

The U.S., Britain, West Germany and Japan Sept. 12 asked U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to send a team of experts to investigate the chemical arms claims. (The U.S.S.R., Belgium and the Netherlands Sept. 15 joined the demand.) Iraq said it would reject such an inquiry as interference in its internal affairs, and Turkey Sept. 14 said a U.N. probe on its territory would be unnecessary and unwelcome.

 

Iraq Sept. 11 launched an Iranian-style propaganda barrage against the U.S. Tens of thousands of chanting protesters marched past the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and Iraq's state-controlled media highlighted the U.S. use of napalm and alleged use of chemical weapons in Vietnam as well as the atomic bomb attacks on Japan in World War II.

 

Iraqi Defense Minister Gen. Adnan Khairallah, in a rare interview with Western reporters, Sept. 15 hinted that his government reserved the right to use whatever means it deemed necessary to deal with Kurdish "traitors" who had supported "the Iranian enemy." While Iraq was opposed to using poison gas, he said, "each rule has an exception." But he also claimed that using gas would not be logical because it would pollute the Iraqi army's own lines of advance."

 

One thing I will admit: the sanctions never made it out of the Senate, due to the tendancy of the House to delete amendments dealing with Iraq sanctions (smooth move). You can't just claim it was some 'wink-wink-we-support-ya' deal either.

 

The gassing of the Kurds was the beginning of the decline in American-Iraqi relations, leading to the Gulf War and so on.

 

some more stuff I found

 

Middle East: U.S. Senators Tour Region

"Although it was not originally on their itinerary, the senators April 12 paid a visit to Iraq and talked to President Saddam Hussein. They delivered a letter from U.S. President Bush warning that Iraq's advanced weapons programs "provoke dangerous tensions throughout the Middle East."

 

Hussein denied that his regime was trying to develop atomic or biological weapons, but repeated his threat to attack Israel with chemical weapons if it staged a nuclear strike on Iraq. He offered to scrap Iraq's nonconventional arms if Israel agreed to eliminate its chemical and nuclear weapons."

 

and what about Ambassador Glaspie?

 

"THE HOME FORUM

D. SNOWMAN OF BETHLEHEM, CONN., ASKS, 'WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...?'

 

 

US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie

Carleton Cole

 

Eight days before his Aug. 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein met with April Glaspie, then America's ambassador to Iraq. It was the last high-level contact between the two countries before Iraq went to war.

 

 

GLASPIE: In March 1991, she told a Senate committee that 'we foolishly did not realize [saddam] was stupid.'

MARCY NIGHSWANDER/AP/FILE

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

From a translation of Iraq's transcript of the meeting, released that September, press and pundits concluded that Ms. Glaspie had (in effect) given Saddam a green light to invade.

 

"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts," the transcript reports Glaspie saying, "such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America."

 

The Persian Gulf War began Jan. 17, 1991. But before the official end of the war (April 11), Glaspie was called to testify informally before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

 

She said she was the victim of "deliberate deception on a major scale," and denounced the Iraqi transcript as "a fabrication" that distorted her position, though it contained "a great deal" that was accurate.

 

The veteran diplomat awaited her next assignment, later taking a low-profile job at the United Nations.

 

In November 1992, Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tarik Aziz, gave Glaspie some vindication. He said she had not given Iraq a green light. "She just listened and made general comments," he told USA Today. "We knew the United States would have a strong reaction.""

 

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The one thing I don't like is being misinformed. I hope this post worked out for all of you.

 

Happy Presidents Day